Why the One Plane Golf Swing is the Swing of the Past
and Future
by Chuck Quinton, Fall 2005

The golf swing is the most over analyzed athletic motion in all of sport,
hands down. Millions of dollars each year are spent developing new technologies
in an attempt to improve ailing golfers' swings, yet the scores have remained
the same. Why? Technology has changed but the teaching hasn't.

Jim Hardy was the first to come up with the concept that there are two sets
of fundamentals in the golf swing. He first talked about this on an episode
of Golf Academy Live on The Golf Channel in 2003 with Peter Jacobsen and more
recently in his book, The Plane Truth fo Golfers. In The Golf Channel episode,
he talked about how almost all golf instruction today is based on a swing
that attempts to perfectly time and blend the relatively flat rotation of
the body with the upright swinging of the arms. This, he called a two plane
swing. This swing works, as many great golfers on the PGA Tour have had success
with it such as Tom Watson, Jack Nicklaus, David Toms and Retief Goosen. However,
Hardy believes there is another type of a golf swing that relies far less
on timing and synchronizing and employs a more natural rotary swinging motion.
This swing attempts to match the arm and shoulder planes throughout the swing,
rather than trying to match them up during the downswing. Hardy called this
a one plane swing and, in my opinion, many of his views follow very closely
with that of Ben Hogan in his book "The Five Fundamentals of Golf."
There are many great examples of one plane golfers today on the PGA Tour and
one individual in particular who, in my opinion, spent much of 2004 converting
to a one plane swing - Tiger Woods. But when you think of a one plane swing,
there is one golfer who should come to mind before any other - Ben Hogan -
the greatest ball striker of all time.

For years, information on the one plane swing has been scarcely available
apart from Hogan's book and the Hardy/Jacobsen episode on Academy Live. I
have scoured the web, books and everywhere else in between for a single repository
of information about this concept, but I came up empty handed. My swing and
my teaching had always been based on this concept of swinging on a single
plane, but I had never heard it presented quite like Hardy did, so I wanted
to learn more. Fortunately, my instructor, Adrian Wadey, (all great teachers
should have teachers, in my opinion) spent a day with Jim Hardy talking about
the one plane swing and I was able to learn more about Hardy's approach. Hardy's
ideas truly changed the way I think of the golf swing and most importantly,
it changed my ball striking immediately. The concepts made sense and unlike
those of most golf instruction today, they actually worked without taking
months or even years to "work through" the changes, it took one
swing. Today, I am commonly known for my students only taking one lesson from
me and then moving on. Not because they didn't find it useful, but because
their swings were transformed in less than two hours. You can read actual
posts from many of my students by visiting our discussion forums.

As I mentioned, Tiger Woods is learning how to swing on one plane with Hank
Haney. Vijay Singh has always swung on one plane. Ben Hogan had the classic
one plane swing. Stuart Appleby, Scott McCarron and many other PGA Tour players
swing on one plane. Yet very few golfers outside the Tour know anything about
it and detailed information is nearly impossible to come by. Fortunately,
the concepts of the swing are very simple, which is part of Jim Hardy's brilliance,
and I have presented my views on them in this website.

My aim in developing this website was to provide a resource for other golfers
who have heard of the one plane swing and wanted to learn more. I also wanted
to create a public forum of knowledge sharing for all golfers to come together
and share their own thoughts and experiences regarding the one plane swing,
as well as my own experiences with the swing and how I teach it. While some
of my opinions may differ fromt Hardy's, it is to him and other swing theory
pioneers such as Ben Hogan that I owe much of my own golfing success. Without
Hardy's ideas about the two swings I, too, would still be struggling with
my golf swing as so many golfers still do. For me, his ideas changed my golf
game, the way I teach the swing and the entire way that I think about the
golf swing. In no way, whatsoever, do I wish to take any of his ideas and
make them seem as if they are my own. Just as Jim McLean produced a video
series on the swing and ideas of Ben Hogan, and just as David Leadbetter did
the same by writing a book about Hogan's Five Fundamentals, I wish to do the
same with Jim Hardy and his ideas of the golf swing and how I applied them
to my own game and instruction. Like Leadbetter's views on Hogan, some of
the things Hardy says I may not fully agree with. Golf is very individualistic,
and no one, in my opinion has ever swung the club in such a way that they
can fit perfectly into one model or theory.

The golf instructors I mentioned above understand the mecahnics of the golf
swing better than anyone else. The likes of Hogan and Harmon, Leadbetter and
McLean have forged a path in understanding the technical details of the golf
swing. However, it is interesting that rarely, if ever, do they talk about
the mental aspects of the game. It is commonly talked about that golf is 90%
mental. If so, then why do these instructors seem to spend 100% of their time
talking about something that only makes up 10% of the game?

If you've been around golf long enough, you realize that there is just something
missing in your swing. Some days it's good, most days it's bad. You go from
one swing tip to the next, but nothing ever sticks, nothing works for more
than a few rounds. In the following pages, I'm going to help you understand
the path to what I consider the true one plane swing. It is not just a swing
where the arms and shoulders swing on the same plane, but a swing where the
mind and body swing on the same "plane."